This week I’m sharing 5 days of tips to help you find new clients.

I’d like to preface the series with an analogy.

Finding awesome new clients is a lot like planting grass seed in your front yard.

You prep the yard by removing the sticks and leaves, leveling the ground, and spreading quality topsoil. But, when it comes time to plant grass seed you fling one solitary seed of grass into the soil, hoping your yard grows. We all know that’s not the way to a beautiful, green yard.

Strangely though, that’s often the approach people take when finding new clients. They pitch a seed or two into the interwebs and cross their fingers for growth.

Tossing a seed in the soil is a lot like having a slick website and hoping it’ll bring in a slew of new clients. Yes, having a well-designed website that showcases your business offerings is a good starting point but there’s much more you can do to find the clients you long to work with.

Instead you need to scatter as many seeds as possible. You need to be prolific in a meaningful way if you hope to have a lush, yard full of wonderful clients.

It’s time to Check Your Motives

Today’s client finding tips are all about motives! Your potential customers will more than likely be able to see your motives in action when you communicate with them. Let’s ensure they see what’s genuine.

Don’t be salesy all the time.

Have you heard of the ABC sales slogan? It means “always be closing”. Always sell, always close those sales. That slogan feels rather icky-telemarketing-esque to me. In order to find clients, yes, they need to know you’re offering something but you don’t have to be frantic. The key is to broaden your scope of conversation and interaction with people so it’s not salesy a hundred percent of the time.

If the only thing you communicate online and in the real world about your business is, “Hey, I sell this killer product… let me tell you about it…”, or “Hey, I’m offering blah, blah, blah, this week…” people will be turned off!

There isn’t a hard and fast rule for this but consider 10-20% sales talk (aka – gently and kindly talking about your offerings) and the remaining 80-90% helping others, doing meaningful work, taking on fun projects and collaborating, making a difference in the world, etc. Let your work speak for itself. That method is more attractive than shoving products in front of folks, especially in this marketing saturated culture.

Drop the one-sided motive.

If potential customers or clients can sense an underlying motive that’s purely one sided they’ll run the other way. As in, “I want to sell a zillion copies of this ebook so I can be location independent and sun my buns on the Caribbean shore.” Yes, your motives may not be that one-sided but examine them.

Are you communicating, firstly, that your products or services truly help others? If not, try an make that sift. Potential customers want to know what’s in it for them, how your offering will transform their lives.

Know others well.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received a cold email from a person who’s trying to sell me something or shove a product in my face. They start out saying, “I love your blog.” Great. That’s generic as heck and they could (and do) say that to anyone.

Before you reach out to people to gently pitch your services or offerings to them, study their business, work, projects. Get invested by reading through their website, several blog posts, and diving deep into their offerings. Know what they’re about. When you reach out to folks be genuine and specific with your comments. “I read your post on choosing a perfect paint color and it helped me x,y,z. Thanks!” Don’t follow up with a sales pitch of what you offer. Leave it at that for now. They might reply with words of thanks and ask you what you do or what you’re working on. Perfect opening.

Swap services.

If you’re looking to grow your client base consider hiring someone or swapping services with another professional. Ensure they’re services or products that’ll enhance your business before your purchase. Hire an expert to edit your about page on your website. When they work with you to tweak your content, they’ll see the genuine person you are and might hire you for severals sessions of life coaching.

Trade photography for fitness coaching. Professional organizing for non profit consulting. Event planning for nutrition guidance. Purchase someone else’s ebook or mini-course. By trading — or paying for someone else’s service you’re introduced to more people. Entrepreneurs who will begin to know, like, and trust you. People who will want to refer others your way.

Share what others are doing.

In our businesses it’s easy to think we need to talk about ourselves. What we’re working on, offering, developing. While that’s true, make it a priority to tweet, Facebook share, Instagram shout out, or blog about other people.

Create a blog post of product or service round ups of entrepreneurs you admire. Interview a solopreneur on your podcast or during a Twitter chat. When you share other’s work you create an atmosphere of camaraderie, one that will likely get others to share about your work. Testimonials and shares from your admirers will bring in more clients than if you were solely singing your own praises.

Today’s ‘finding new clients’ challenge!

Pick one tip from the list above and put it to work in your business. Which one will you commit to work on today? Let me know in the comments below. And remember… be prolific.

If you could use more encouraging ideas like these to grow your business, sign up below! I’ll also send you my Brand Decoder Toolkit for free.

Stumbling upon this series a bit late, Alysa, but love it. When it comes to gaining and pleasing clients, it’s all about putting in the proper time and effort to ensure the pairing makes sense and will allow for the most successful outcome.